Christmas Aftermath

“Hey, did you—”

“Yes, I got it. Wait, is this all of it?”

“No.”

“Oh my God, how are we going to fit all of this in here?”

“We’ll ask my brother to carry some.”

There are times in this life when you are overwhelmed with generosity. Christmas? One of those times. We have, at this moment, about a half dozen great, expensive toys that remain unopened. Why? Because we’re so busy opening the other twenty or so incredible gifts or we’re sorting out the rest.

Annie got a Doodle Bear and some Princess stuff and clothes and a stroller and a baby doll and movies and a drawing board thing and a huge kitchen playset. Abby got a baby doll and a piggy bank and baby clothes and baby props and two huge boxes with Little People playsets. And that’s with me forgetting some. Huge, elaborate gifts that are so cool…if there weren’t so damn much of them. We had two trash bags and a huge cardboard box stuff with toys…and even that didn’t cover it.

I guess you could say my mother in law goes a little too far in the gift department, to the point where Christmas is almost a job of opening, throwing away the wrapper, and spending hours trying to actually have fun with the gifts provided. She can literally frighten a child with the amount of gifts they receive each December 25th. To the point where the child is numb to them, opening gifts just so they can say they opened X amount.

I would also like to nominate whoever is in charge of packaging and twisty-ties at Fisher Price to be the new Head of Homeland Security because…damn.

“Oh, sure you can get into the cockpit…if you just take off these eight thick twisty-ties, those pieces of tape, and then use a screwdriver to put batteries in the lock so it will open. Good luck.”

I spent several hours yesterday assembling the Talking Princess Kitchen, which is pretty cool but a little intricate in terms of construction. However, once fully assembled it was pretty cool, as with two AA batteries the thing came to life when you turned a knob or put something on a stove eye. The girls sure loved it.

As for myself, I took home the Nintendo DS I wanted, complete with Mario Kart DS and Kirby’s Canvas Curse, leading me to believe that there is nothing funner on that cool, wacky machine than spending hours drawing rainbows for Kirby to slide on. Ericka gave me a lovely picture of her and the girls framed and matted, so that will be up in the office by tomorrow. I also procured Virtua Tennis for the PSP, because I’m a video game tennis freak (I love video game golf too), and I also scored the new Sin City DVD as well as a Schr?dinger's Cat Is Dead shirt which should go well with my new collection of games such as Set and FBI.

For Ericka I scored her some clothes and a gift certificate to Torrid, her favorite store, along with the complete series of Sex and the City. It came in a tough plexiglass box with a velvet case. Very nice, if not a little pricey. But my baby’s worth it.

Overall the Christmas experience has been better than expected. No problems other than overabundance (which is a ‘Good Problem’) and the girls certainly came out ahead. I’m thrilled with my DS and I think my wife enjoyed her gifts too.

You can see some pictures of Christmas at my grandmother’s over here, courtesy of the always-awesome Jim (I’m holding his baby girl in the second photo).

My condolences to my bud Jeremy who got robbed on Christmas Eve. Sigh. Buncha savages in this town.

Until tomorrow…

So much goin on these days
Forget about instinct, it’s not what pays